Gender Equality has not yet been achieved in many western countries. Switzerland in particular has failed as a forerunner in integrating women in politics and economy. Taking Switzerland as a case study, the authors critically reflect the state of gender equality in different policy areas such as education, family and labour. The collection of articles reveals how gender policies and cultural contexts interact with social practices of gender (in)equality. They also outline the gender(ed) effects of recent changes and reform strategies for scientists, politicians and practitioners.&#xD;

There are many political measures for equality in the profession, but why do they still lack the resounding success? What dynamics are at work in the implementation and enforcement of these measures, and how can equality policies be better designed and coordinated in the future? In order to find answers to these questions, the authors compare the structures and measures of corporate equality policies of public employers using the example of federal administrations in Switzerland, Germany and Austria.

In Switzerland, "Lehrbetriebsverbünde" (apprenticeship company networks) represent a new model of vocational training. The author shows that the project-based organisation of this form of basic vocational training, in which learners change companies several times, constitutes new mechanisms of social inequality in the field of basic vocational training. This is due to the fact that training company networks place substantially higher demands on the self-organisation and flexibility of learners than traditional apprenticeships. A confident handling of these requirements requires specific prerequisites and resources that are unequally distributed in terms of social structure. Nevertheless, training company networks also offer the opportunity to reduce social inequality. The prerequisite for this is that training company networks do not presuppose the unevenly distributed key competences such as flexibility and self-organisation, which are fundamental to working life, as skills, but rather systematically impart them during training. In addition, framework conditions must be created which make it possible for learners from less privileged backgrounds to master the challenges of collaborative training.